At least according to Seth Godin. Social networking and online communities are exploding & many companies are banking on their community to be a differentiator from the competition. Communities do NOT build themselves without some human nurturing; someone has to be there to moderate SPAM, encourage early users, listen to user feedback, answer questions from users, relay relevant product suggestions to the product team, help resolve disputes between members, and spread the word to potential new community members. So, I certainly see how Seth can say online community managers are going to be in high demand in the future.

I guess this bodes well for me, since I’m already in a community organizer role at Zillow.

Don’t know if Zillow is adding more people, but if you need to, here’s the place to start 🙂

SJ

you are totally correct in saying that sites need community managers. the problem lies with sites that “toss” community managers in their search for ways to “cut costs” and trim the budget. I have served as a community manager for numerous sites, some which were long term positions, some which were for start up sites and others where when I left, a great deal of the community followed me. In all of those cases, I added much to the loyalty and trust base that those at headquarters could not. The issue as I see it is this, until sites realize that trust and total backing of the decisions their managers make are what it takes to make a good site even better, sites will flounder and possibly fail.